Report: Arizona child welfare needs full overhaul

FILE - In this Dec. 3, 2013 file photo, Arizona Dept. of Juvenile Corrections Director Charles Flanagan speaks about the Child Protective Services agency amid revelations that more than 6,500 child abuse and welfare reports were illegally closed without an investigation, in Phoenix. After Gov. Jan Brewer abolished Child Protective Services, she renamed the agency the Division of Child Safety and Family Services and appointed Flanagan to head the department. (AP Photo/Matt York, File)
The Associated Press

FILE - In this Dec. 3, 2013 file photo, Arizona Dept. of Juvenile Corrections Director Charles Flanagan speaks about the Child Protective Services agency amid revelations that more than 6,500 child abuse and welfare reports were illegally closed without an investigation, in Phoenix. After Gov. Jan Brewer abolished Child Protective Services, she renamed the agency the Division of Child Safety and Family Services and appointed Flanagan to head the department. (AP Photo/Matt York, File)

FILE - In this Jan. 13, 2014 file photo, Arizona Gov. Jan Brewer announces her plan to end the current Child Protective Services agency by executive order during her State of the State address at the Arizona Capitol in Phoenix. An independent team named by Gov. Brewer to review the state's troubled child welfare agency on Friday Jan. 31, 2014, called for a top-to-bottom overhaul of the department to focus it purely on child safety. (AP Photo/Ross D. Franklin, File)The Associated Press

FILE - In this Jan. 13, 2014 file photo, Arizona Gov. Jan Brewer announces her plan to end the current Child Protective Services agency by executive order during her State of the State address at the Arizona Capitol in Phoenix. An independent team named by Gov. Brewer to review the state's troubled child welfare agency on Friday Jan. 31, 2014, called for a top-to-bottom overhaul of the department to focus it purely on child safety. (AP Photo/Ross D. Franklin, File)

PHOENIX (AP) — An independent team named by Arizona Gov. Jan Brewer to review the state's troubled child welfare agency on Friday called for a top-to-bottom overhaul of the department to focus it purely on child safety.

The team released a 54-page review outlining steps needed to address yearslong problems at Child Protective Services. The most severe issue was revealed in November when more than 6,500 child abuse and neglect reports were found to have not been investigated.

Brewer abolished Child Protective Services earlier this month and created a new child welfare department that reports directly to her.

The Republican governor's CARE team report recommends retraining social workers, working more with outside providers and law enforcement and overhauling the state's child abuse hotline.

The report also recommends creating an agency inspections bureau to provide oversight and removing civil service protections from child welfare agency workers to allow exceptional performance to be rewarded.

"It's a very insular, closed, friend of friend-type culture and that needs to change," said Rep. Kate Brophy McGee, a Republican who is on the team. "It needs to be a system of employees who are supported in the job they are expected to do that's clearly outlined for them that they will then be accountable for."

The report revealed big lag times in the abuse hotline system, noting that 26 percent of callers hang up while on hold. It mapped 142 possible points in the current system where an abused or neglected child could fall through the cracks.

"It's breathtaking," Brophy McGee said. "It's very scary."

The report also repeated what's already known about the agency — that caseworkers are overworked, turnover approaches 30 percent, and performance standards are unclear.

Dana Naimark, president of the advocacy group Children's Action Alliance, said the report provides a "good, solid roadmap on the investigative side."

"I thought it was really important that they pointed out the connection between the child abuse and neglect issue and the lack of child care and other prevention support, and we certainly are looking to our leaders to take action in these areas this session as well," Naimark said.

Brewer created what she's calling the CARE team in December after it was learned that a group inside the Child Protective Services agency had been closing reports received by its child abuse hotline without sending them to social workers in the field for investigation. The idea was to cull out reports not meriting action to lower the caseload of overwhelmed field workers, but a review found many should've been acted upon, and all by law required a response.

Five senior CPS workers remain on administrative leave as investigations into who authorized the closings continue.

The CARE team has been handling the previously uninvestigated reports and assigned all but three of 6,554 cases to social workers. Those three were referred to authorities on Indian reservations outside state jurisdiction.

Social workers have removed 91 children from their homes since the neglected reports dating to 2009 were discovered. A review also found that before the closed cases were discovered, nearly 1,200 of them had subsequent reports that led to the removal of at least 316 children from their homes.